There’s a magic to constructive feedback that inspires me to make my story better and gives me new energy to write and revise, and that’s what I listen for–that moment when someone says something that sparks an idea for a new scene or turn of phrase that will make my work-in-progress the best it can be. Constructive feedback resonates with the recipient. If it doesn’t, then it’s not constructive, and I ignore it as best I can.

I love the advice about setting a deadline to avoid the perfection trap. I’ve seen too many good writers get stuck on the flypaper of perfection.

What I put in my thesis was that readers have “filters” that they sieve what they read through. Those filters are made up of who the reader is, their experiences and education, their prejudices, etc. When a reader reads something, it goes through this filter. What is read often leaves bits of itself behind to color future reading, but sometimes it jars something loose or changes that person’s earlier perceptions.

This means that no two people will “filter” a story in the same way. In fact, one person may not evaluate a story the same way twice since the make-up of the that person’s filter is constantly changing.

This was one of the most valuable things I came away with from my MFA, but of course I forget it from time to time and take a critique or rejection personally. So thank you for your post. It’s an excellent reminder and a verification that I’m not alone in my outlook.

Just get it out there.

I think this was my mistake; I joined an online crit group WAY too early. Left me discouraged for a number of years. I still wrote some stuff, but I refused to submit it anywhere, convinced that it was all drek.

Live and learn.

As for doing my own crits on others’ work, I always, always, always prefaced any crit with something like, this is just my opinion, take what you think works/trash anything that doesn’t. As you’ve pointed out, it’s all so very subjective, and also, the last thing I want to do is to discourage people from writing. How do I know if I’m squelching someone who might someday sell lots of books, entertaining lots of people?

Not going to be me.

It’s nice to see that my instincts on this were backed up by a long-time writer and editor like you.